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With more than 100 albums and 11 Grammy Award nominations to his credit, Marc-André Hamelin ranks among the most recorded pianists of his generation.
While some of the works that the Montréal-born pianist has recorded are familiar masterpieces, like Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, many others are lesser-known selections by composers ranging from Charles-Valentin Alkan to Xaver Scharwenka.
“A lot of these things that I have done are obscure or half-obscure,” he said. “I really want to do them not for myself, but for other people, including pianists, to discover,” he said. “I just delight always in sharing. Sharing for me is a very, very large part of what I do.”
Chicago audiences will again have a chance to hear Hamelin live, when the pianist performs an afternoon recital Feb. 22 in the Symphony Center Presents Piano series, through the presenting arm of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He has long been a regular at Symphony Center, playing with the CSO or appearing on programs like this one.
“I really thrive on these kinds of loyal invitations,” he said. “It’s a great relationship, and I am so happy about it, I can’t tell you. It’s just nice to be trusted.”
He praised the acoustics of Orchestra Hall, as well as the condition of its two Steinway concert grand pianos, which are meticulously maintained by the orchestra’s four elite technicians. “There is no way I could possibly complain,” he said.
Hamelin will open his Feb. 22 program with Charles Ives’ Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass. 1840-60), which he calls “a very, very old friend.” In 1975, when he was 13, he bought his first record: a recording of this sonata by its early champion, John Kirkpatrick.
“I listened to it for a whole summer,” Hamelin said. “It opened so many doors for me perceptually and musically, and I think in September, I finally got a copy of the score. Up to then, I had only been imagining it. Of course, I didn’t play it until quite a few years later, but it has been part of me for more than 50 years now.”
The 45-minute sonata, which was first published in 1920 and revised in 1947, is an experimental work with advanced harmonies and cluster chords, as well as musical quotations from works such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Each movement is meant to be a kind musical impression of a different writer or set of writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott and her father.
Also on the program will be Robert Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 12, and Alexander Scriabin’s Sonata No. 3 in F-Sharp Minor, Op. 23.
Hamelin first started recording in the late 1980s, and since 1993, he has been an exclusive artist with Hyperion Records, a well-regarded British classical label. Among his most recent releases are:
September, 2024, Dmitri Shostakovich, Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2. This was a re-release of this 2003 recording with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. It is one of five releases from the Hyperion library that the label has released on vinyl in a limited edition of 1,000, and it is already sold out. “Vinyl is really coming back into vogue,” he said. Other past albums by Hamelin are also scheduled for a similar treatment, including a 2003 compilation of piano music by Nikolai Kapustin, set to be released in February. “They’re going to do more, as much as the public demands,” Hamelin said.
April, 2025, Takács Quartet, Dvořák & Price: Piano Quintets. Since both Hamelin and the famed Takács Quartet are Hyperion artists, the label suggested they pair up, an idea that was quickly embraced by all. “I’m delighted to have done five projects with them so far, and I hope that the end isn’t in sight,” Hamelin said, “because working with them is like putting on a very comfortable glove. Everything seems to fit.”
This release brought together quintets by Antonin Dvořák and Florence Price, who was influenced by the Czech composer’s calls for American composers to draw on indigenous and folk sources for their music. Her Quintet in A Minor incorporates spirituals and the juba dance, among other African-American influences. The five musicians had to rehearse longer than usual for that piece because of problems with the only published edition of the work, which was rediscovered in 2009, among a lost cache of her manuscripts.
November 2025, Found Objects/Sound Objects. This album brings together seven works, including little-known ones, alongside what Hamelin called a classic, John Cage’s The Perilous Night (1944), the composer’s first large-scale work for prepared piano (an instrument altered with the insertion of bolts, rubber erasers or other objects on or between strings). “It was partly a way to get together a number of things, which I don’t think would have really fit easily into other projects,” Hamelin said. “The idea of a whole contemporary-music album had been in my head for a while, and this was an ideal opportunity to do that. And I think I was taking risk, because I’m not generally known for that kind of thing.” Also included is John Oswald’s Tip (2021), which was written for Hamelin, and Stefan Wolpe’s Passacaglia from the composer’s Four Studies on Basic Rows (1935-36). “It’s been a friend for quite awhile,” he said of the Wolpe selection, “But it is so complex that every time I take it up again, I discover something new in it.”
In addition to his performing, Hamelin is also a composer, and indeed, one of his works, Hexensabbat, is featured on Found Objects, what he kiddingly called “airing out my laundry.” He tries to squeeze whatever time he has left from his performing to create his own music. “Remember I’m a pianist who composes and not the other way around,” he said. “So I don’t devote as much time as a full-fledged, establishment composer would, and I have produced comparatively little, if you put me against any other more famous composer. Composing for me is a necessity, but it is not my main activity.”
